Sooo...
This trip actually started a year ago from Chicago, IL on August 21st 2017 to our current location in Cuenca, Ecuador. Over the last year my wife-to-be, Marisa, and I have seen amazing sights, met wonderful people, and have gone down some of the best roads imaginable for a couple of kids from the plain states.

I figured I would dive in over the next couple weeks to post our journey from the last year, then catch up to our current location and keep a log from then on out. We have 2 more years left in our budget, after the Americas, we will ship the bike to South Africa and make our way north... then, we have no idea.

I wanted to provide a quick progress of large chunks of our trip, and once caught up, or get to really amazing sections of roads, I will provide more detail.
Below is our trip up until today, September 10th, 2018. So let's dive in...
The trip did not have its fairy tail beginning as hoped.
On the very day I quit my job, I came home to 3 police cars in our driveway that were all standing around my bike. Apparently, a group of 4 men had tried to steal my motorcycle just minutes before I arrived.
Thankfully the would be thieves cut and tried to splice the heated grip wires (they took "hot-wire" way to literally). To this day I still have an abomination of mechanical splices and electric tape that I used to surgically reattach the wires.The second blunder was that we sold all of our possessions, moved out of the house we were renting in Arkansas, and moved into my father's basement (awesome I know).
The problem was we no longer had an official residence to claim when we applied for our Illinois Drivers license, we were voluntarily homeless with no proof of actually living anywhere... try to get official paperwork with that on your record (or lack of).

But by the grace of God, we hit the road (without a license) and made our way West. As you look at the picture below, I can hear you screaming "Man, that is a lot of stuff!" You will be happy to know we have greatly reduced our load to a point that most will think is still too much...Then while in the middle of Nowhere, Kansas... another gremlin reared its head... The lovely KTM dealership that had prepped my bike for world travel installed the sprocket on the wrong side of the chain assembly. This caused the chain to be off center by only an inch, but far enough to the right that it started eating away at the side wall of my tire...With the assistance of the first of many heroes of our trip, I broke out the schematics of the assembly on a PDF I have on my phone of the breakdown of parts, and we took the rear tire off, and moved all of the parts back to where they belong. Good as new!

I call this the "bad news" post as it seemed the Gods' were against our journey every step of the way. But those truly frustrating moments led to Marisa and I working as a team, adapting, and solving problems on the fly.

As this thread continues, the roads open up with nothing but beauty and wonder. We passed the test; "Only the penitent man shall pass" (This will be the only Indiana Jones quote, I promise)

If you want to skip ahead of this thread's progress, I would be more than willing to share some of our social media sources. I don't want to break any rules and list them on this page. But, if you have any questions about finances, logistics, or countries we've been to from the US to Ecuador, shoot me a PM and I would love to further explain any topic any one may have.

Thanks for following us along!

Tim Notier